Our mission is to help develop young physicists and engineers to be able to fulfill the role of either clinical medical physicist working in the hospital environment or research medical physicist employed in research laboratories or the biomedical device industry. In the spirit of inter-professional cooperation the Medical Physics Unit also takes pride in its extensive expertise in teaching relevant aspects of the subject to other healthcare professionals.
Clinical medical physicists working in the hospital environment contribute to maintaining and improving the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of healthcare services through patient-oriented activities requiring expert action, involvement or advice regarding the specification, selection, acceptance testing, commissioning, quality assurance and optimised clinical use of medical devices and protection from associated physical agents such as ionising radiation and magnetic fields.
In the case of research oriented medical physicists the role is much wider. Here, physics concepts, theories and methods are used for the greater understanding and development of both clinical practice and experimental medicine. This is a wider definition than Clinical Medical Physics and would include physics based aspects of life science research that would have a future impact on healthcare e.g., advanced microscopy, nanodevices, biomolecular structure, cell biology physics.
Our Unit offers a Masters course in Medical Physics and is a prime actor in the development of medical physics curricula at the European level.
Starting October 2019 the Medical Physics Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences and the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Science are jointly offering a new undergraduate degree B.Sc. (Hons.) Physics, Medical Physics and Radiation Protection - which is one of the most innovative and interesting Physics based degrees worldwide and geared towards maximizing the employability and possibilities of further study and research of our graduates. The degree opens the door to careers in all areas of Physics and as hospital Medical Physicist (a warranted health care profession in Malta, Medical Physicists at Expert level are a legal requirement of EU Directive 2013/59/EURATOM) and Radiation Protection Expert (also a legal requirement of EU Directive 2013/59/EURATOM) and medical research and medical device industry, university career, medical device sales and physics education.
